The Time With The
by donutsweeper
Summary: The five times Steve and Bucky lied about what they faced during the War and the one time they told the truth (aka the five times they trolled the Avengers and one truth that enabled them to get away with it.)


"No, no, you can't leave your neck exposed like that," Bucky tsked as he went through the concept sketches for Hawkeye's new costume that Clint had spread out over the table. "You need a collar, preferably a nice thick one."

'What?' Clint looked up from the papers, but not in time to see Steve, who'd recognized what that tone meant (aka _trouble_), trying to warn Bucky off with a raised finger. "A collar? Why?"

"Tell him, Steve, you're the one who almost learned the hard way."

"No," Steve said, sighing just a bit, but playing along with whatever Bucky was doing; he'd always had Bucky's back in the past. He wasn't going stop having it now. "No, it wasn't me, it was Monty."

"Oh, that's right. Memory's still a little Swiss cheesed sometimes," Bucky said, sounding slightly apologetic as he tapped the side of his temple a few times with his index finger before pointing at Clint. "But I remembered the incident, which is the important part, and how it proved that high collared, thick, coats are the way to go if you want to protect yourself properly."

"I need a collar to protect myself? Protect myself from what?"

Bucky looked at Steve, his face the picture of perfectly earnestness to anyone who hadn't known him his whole life, and said, "Vampires."

"Vampires," Clint replied, incredulously. His head tilted ever so slightly to the side and he slowly raised his eyebrows. It didn't appear that he believed them at all.

"Vampires," Bucky repeated.

"Yep, vampires. Nasty creatures," Steve added with a grimace, shaking his head as if trying to rid himself of the memory. Or, at least he hoped it looked that way.

"You fought vampires."

"Yep. Well, not your stereotypical children of the night Dracula types-"

"No capes." Now that Steve knew where the story was going he was ready to embellish it.

"Right, no capes, and they didn't burn up in the sun anything like that, but they were super pale and their teeth!" Bucky curled his index fingers and held them in front of his open mouth, turning them into fangs. "They had fangs!"

Clint turned from Bucky to Steve. "Fangs?" he asked, his tone still flat and completely incredulous.

"Fangs." Steve nodded. "Like the kind Bela Lugosi had in 'Dracula'."

Bucky slapped Steve on the arm. "He's not going to know Bela Lugosi or 'Dracula', that was way before his time."

"It's a classic, just because it's old doesn't mean it's been forgotten. There's a whole channel that's dedicated to old black and white movies. It's possible he's seen it. Or maybe at least heard of Lugosi. Have you? What about Lugosi? Any idea who he is?"

"People have better things to do with their time today than watch movies from eighty whatever years ago. And black and white? Movies today, it's all about explosions and special effects, I bet-"

"I've seen 'Dracula'," Clint said, interrupting Bucky's now familiar 'the problem with people today' monologue before it could really get started. "I've seen a _lot_ of versions of 'Dracula' and other vampire things, it's a whole movie genre these days, but I've never heard _anything_ about real vampires, let alone Captain America fighting them and I've heard nearly every story ever about your adventures."

"The ones you have the clearance for, sure," Bucky drawled. "But, come on, you really think _all_ our adventures made the history books? All of them? Really?"

"He's right," Steve said, slapping Bucky on the back. "There are plenty that are still classified and probably always will be."

"Yeah," Clint reluctantly agreed, "but... Vampires?"

"Vampires are nothing." Bucky tossed the papers down on the table and headed for the door. "Sometime get Steve to tell you about the werewolves."

"Ugh." Steve shuddered and followed Bucky out. "Werewolves."

Clint just stood there and watched them go, rubbing the side of his neck unconsciously. "Werewolves? What?"

When the socialite threw her drink in Tony's face and stalked off, it drew all the Avenger's eyes to him, particularly Bucky's. "You know, Tony," Bucky drawled, his tone immediate alerting Steve to pay particular attention to what he said next. "You should be more careful when it comes to talking to the dames."

Tony made a dismissive "pfft" noise and waved away Bucky's comment. "You old timey folks and your cutesy expressions. We call them women these days, not dames, and I have plenty of respect for them."

"I'm not 'old timey' or 'cute' and I didn't say anything about respect now, did I?"

"Don't worry, no one in their right mind would think you're 'cute', Buck," Steve joked, not quite sure where Bucky was going with his warning, but helping him run with it anyway. "Handsome, sure. Debonair, maybe. But, cute? Nah, not going to happen."

"Anyway," Bucky said, drawing out the word into three distinct syllables. "My looks and charm aside, unless you're one hundred percent sure who you're dealing with, you better treat women right. If you don't." Shaking his head slowly, Bucky grimaced and then shuddered. "Trust me, it ain't pretty."

Tony scoffed, "Eh, you mean because they might throw a drink at me? Big deal." He made a dismissive gesture with his hand. "Other than a waste of good scotch and possibly looking like you've wet your pants there's not a lot of-"

"I don't think Buck is trying to warn you about keeping you dry, Tony." Steve didn't actually know _what_ Bucky was going on about, but considering the tone of voice? Whatever it was, it was going to be good.

"Nope." Bucky popped the 'p' obnoxiously loudly.

"So enlighten me then, o' ancient one. Tell me of what I am supposed to be afraid."

"Witches," Bucky announced, in the most matter of fact manner, like he was just commenting on the weather.

"Witches," Tony repeated.

"Witches," Steve confirmed with a nod, picking up the story and running with it. "You don't want to cross one of them."

"You're telling me that _you_ crossed a witch?"

"Mr. Clean Cut here?" Bucky pointed at Steve with his thumb. "Be rude to anyone, let alone a woman? Nah. It was Dum Dum."

"Dum Dum Dugan," Steve clarified.

"I know who Dum Dum is. Okay, I'll bite. What did he do and how did she respond?"

Bucky opened his mouth. "Well-" he began, but Tony held up his hand and cut him off.

"No, no, no, no. I want to hear this story from Cap. No offense or anything, Barnes, but I don't know if I trust you when it comes to a story like this."

That was a problem. Or a complication at least, Bucky was the tall tale teller of the two of them while Steve usually was just the detail man, fleshing out Bucky's story to make it seem more real. But, there's a first time for everything; Steve pursed his lips and began to spin a story. "Dum Dum was a great guy, but he had certain, ideas let's say, when it came to women's, erm, attributes."

"Attributes?"

Steve cleared his throat and felt the heat rise to his face as he gestured to his chest and mimed a well endowed set of breasts. "Attributes," he repeated, fully embracing the notion he was hopelessly prudish when it came to women and all things sexual as he used the time to plan out what he was going to say.

"Ah, right," Tony said with a little laugh. "Attributes."

"Anyway, he couldn't stop staring and then he, well, I won't repeat what he said, but she told him that was no way to speak to a lady - and to be fair she was right - but she was able to do something about it."

Bucky jumped into the storytelling then, grimacing and shaking his head. "Poor Dugan."

Tony rubbed his goatee. "I'm starting to think I don't want to know what she did."

"You know those commercials for," Steve cleared his throat. "Male. The problems older men can have. The drugs they can take. For when they can't, you know, perform? Wellllll."

"She made it so he couldn't get it up?" Tony grimaced slightly, but didn't seem overly affected by the story. "Poor guy."

"Nah." Bucky leaned in, pitching his voice low. "She made it so he was constantly hard but couldn't get off. Two whole days he spent like that. Poor guy." Both Steve and Bucky shook their heads while Tony winced.

"It was awful," Steve said.

"Poor guy," Bucky added before slapping Tony hard on the back. "And on that note, I need a drink. Steve? Want one?"

"I think I'll come with you and see if they have any ginger ale and then make the rounds. Can I get you anything, Tony?" Tony shook his head. "All right, see you later then."

"Witches," Tony muttered thoughtfully to himself as they headed off. "Nahhh, they were just putting me on. I mean, they had to be, right?" but he didn't sound very convinced.

"Here." Steve passed Natasha a towel as soon as she entered the Quinjet. "You're going to want to get as much of the creature's slime out of your hair and off your clothes before it dries."

The battle had been won, but it had been a particularly messy one. Random alien bugs were becoming an unfortunately common foe and they always resulted in a ridiculous amount of cleanup, even if the fight had been easily won.

"Ugh, thanks." Before using the towel though, she bent over and let her hair hang down in front of her and used her fingers to squeegee some of the slime, and a few bits of guts, out of her hair first.

Bucky came bounding in then, laughing.

"You're disturbingly chipper considering you're covered with slime," Steve observed.

"Are you kidding? Alien cockroaches! And they spit green slime! What's not to love!" Bucky clapped Steve on the back as he reached past him to grab a towel off the pile he was sitting next to. "Reminds me of the old days."

Natasha, her hair wrapped in the first towel, gestured for Steve to hand her a second one. "Which part was similar?"

"The bugs. The slime. The fun. Right, Steve?"

"You apparently remember those days _very_ differently than I do, Buck." Steve shook his head. "I don't remember armies of bugs or a lot of slime."

"Bugs, no," Bucky said and dammed if there wasn't that tone of voice again. Steve took a deep breath and readied himself for whatever story Bucky was going to spin this time. "But there were the mutated gorillas."

Steve shuddered. Mutated gorillas? Where does Bucky get this stuff? "Don't remind me."

Frowning ever so slightly, Natasha eyed Steve. "Mutated gorillas. You and you," she said pointing to Steve and then Bucky, "fought mutated gorillas."

"Yep, about yay big." Bucky held his hand up to about shoulder level.

"Don't forget the Commandos. They helped."Steve shook his head. "And it wasn't an army of them, they weren't being controlled like those bugs today. They were just, kind of, running rampant after they got out of their cages."

"Oh, please. I'm supposed to believe you and your men faced down rampaging Mutated gorillas. Next you're going to tell me they had weapons."

"Welllll," Bucky drawled.

"No, no, no, no, no. No. You guys can't pull one over on me, you saw Planet of the Apes, didn't you?"

"Planet of the what?"

"Planet of the Apes. Either the original or the remake from a couple of years ago. You almost got me, but Clint told me about your supposed battle with the vampires and I heard about the time you trolled Tony with that witches story. No. There never were any mutated gorillas. I don't buy it."

"I'm hurt, Nat. You really think me and this big lug would try to pull one over on you? Us?" Bucky said, sounding hurt and Steve had to admit, Bucky could do moral indignation really well.

"You think we're lying?" Steve asked, making his patented 'wounded puppy' face.

"Yes! Definitely. Probably. I don't know. Gah!" She huffed, throwing her hands up in frustration as she headed out. "I'm taking a shower. I can't deal with Mutated gorillas _and_ slimy bugs all in the same day."

Steve and Bucky waited until Natasha was out of the room to start laughing and well out of hearing.

"I brought you a peace offering. I am sorry," Bruce said, apologizing yet again, when he brought Bucky some coffee he'd stolen from the doctor's lounge and a brownie he'd taken from the cafeteria.

"Doc, you're keeping me in coffee and snacks, you have nothing to apologize for."

"You're only in here because I lost control." Bruce shoved his hands in his pockets and stood at Bucky's bedside, staring at the floor.

Bucky took a long sip of coffee. "Ah, that's the good stuff. I'm in here because someone thought it was a good idea to dose the entire East Side with a berserker gas and you caught a lungful ."

"I should have-"

"Bruce," Steve interrupted. He had been sitting sprawled in the visitor's chair, dozing lightly until the conversation grew loud enough to wake him. "There was nothing you could have done differently. The gas surprised all of us. And anyway, Bucky's going to be fine in a few days; he only spent the night here because he was placating me."

"But-"

"No _but_s. And besides, I would rather you whaled on me than one of the others or some civilian who couldn't take it and I bet Cap feels the same way."

"I do," Steve said quickly.

"Besides, this," Bucky gestured to his broken ribs and bruised pelvis, "is nothing. You should have seen me after that yeti got a hold of me. Despite Cap jumping in to try to help I was a mess by the time Dum Dum managed to take it down with what, five shots to the head?" He turned to Steve to confirm who slapped his game face on and nodded quickly.

"Five or six, I think; I was too busy trying to save your ass to count."

"But it's such a nice ass," Bucky teased.

Steve blushed but managed to shoot back a teasing, "Good thing I kept it safe then, hmmm?"

"Wait, wait, wait. Yeti? What's this about a yeti?"

"Big creature, covered in fur, liked the snow. About yay big," Bucky said, holding his hand about a foot and a half over his head.

"You're saying Captain America fought a yeti with his bare hands during World War II."

"Well, the Commandos helped," Bucky drawled.

"I'm sorry, but I don't buy it. A story like that? It would have made the news."

"It was classified, Bruce." Steve pitched his voice to sound almost apologetic. "One of those 'we were never there' kind of missions."

"We had a _lot_ of those."

"Still." Bruce shook his head as he spoke, sounding slightly hesitant, yet disbelieving.

"You should have seen the claws on that thing," Bucky said, throwing everything he had into the story as he mimed the size of the creature's claws with his hands. "And its feet!" Bucky was bending over to illustrate its foot size compared to his own when he gasped, paled suddenly, and wrapped his arm around his middle instead.

"Lie back!" Bruce all but shouted, pressing Bucky back down on the bed and against the pillows. "You shouldn't be moving about with those ribs the way they are. Just lie back and don't move. I'm going to find a nurse or your doctor and see if you can get something for the pain."

Bucky waited until Bruce had shot out the door on his quest to turn to Steve and wink. "That's another one we managed to pull one over on. This is easier than I thought it'd be."

Steve just shook his head and sighed. "You're incorrigible."

If, thanks to the damned doctors and their ridiculous orders, Steve was going to be stuck recuperating on the couch for an entire week, he figured he was going to have to make the best of it. He'd originally thought that having the team wait on him hand and foot would be sort of nice, but everyone was so hesitant around him that it was driving him batty instead. Yes, Doom and AIM working together had managed to capture him and yes, there had been a serious attempt to break him both physically and mentally, but it hadn't come close to succeeding and he was getting tired of how everyone walking on eggshells around him.

Bucky was the worst of the lot. Seriously, if Bucky brought him one more bowl of soup, he was going to be wearing it. And "no, I do _not_ want another glass of milk, thank you very much for the offer though, but when you asked what I wanted and I said a root beer it was because I _wanted_ a damn root beer, not because I was suddenly speaking in code and said root beer but actually meant milk!"

"I was just trying-" Bucky started.

"I know what you were just trying and I'm asking you to stop, all right?"

"Steve..."

"No. Bucky, I mean it. Now, can we go back to watching this horribly inaccurate zombie picture Tony was subjecting us to now?"

Tony, who had been ignoring the argument in lieu tapping away on a tablet while the movie was paused broke in then, affronted at the criticism. "Inaccurate? I'll have you know that 'Night of the Living Dead' is a classic! What do you know about zombies anyway? There's no way you've seen enough movies to be an expert in them."

Steve had meant the poor makeup job on the mangled corpses, but if Tony was going to go there, well, you couldn't blame him for taking the opportunity and running with it. "Whether or not it's a classic has nothing to do with its inaccurate portrayals of zombies, Tony. And you're right, I haven't seen many zombie movies, but being a film buff isn't the only way to become familiar with zombies, Tony."

There was a moment's pause before Tony gave up all pretence of working and turned to stare at Steve. "What on earth are you... No, no, no. Now you may have convinced me about the witches. Sort of. Maybe. But now there're zombies? And no one ever told _anyone_ about them?"

"Howard never mentioned it?" Steve looked over at Bucky, who was managing his patented 'sincere and surprised look number three'. "He never said anything about that situation we ran into in Minsk?"

"Minsk?" Tony rubbed his chin. "He might have mentioned... something?"

Which was likely, considering they'd found themselves in Minsk in no less than three separate occasions, none of which had anything to do with zombies, but what Tony didn't know wouldn't hurt him.

"Well, then, there you go," Steve said. "Buck, turn the movie back on, I could use a laugh."

With a flick of the remote the movie continued, putting an end to any chance for Tony to question them on the subject any further.

"No," Bucky was saying to Thor when Steve walked into the room, "it's not that I don't think fighting a bilgesnipe would be hard, I'm just saying there were things Cap and I faced back in the War that were worse."

"Is this about the vampires?" Clint asked, "Because I'm still not sure I buy that there were any such things.

"Vampires? I thought you faced yetis?"

"And I heard mutated gorillas." Natasha sounded the most suspicious and the least amused, not a good combination, all things considered.

"All of those were difficult in their own way," Steve said, truthfully, since spinning their stories hadn't been easy in the least, "But I don't think any of them are the creatures Bucky was going to talk about this time.

Bucky turned to Steve and raised an eyebrow and gave him the _'Are we really going to do this now?'_ look which Steve replied to with a _'Considering I like my spine the way it is YES we are, got it?'_ before he said, "Steve's right, I was just about to tell Thor about the time Cap here punched out a dinosaur."

"A dinosaur?" echoed around the room. Thor sounded intrigued, but both Clint and Bruce sounded skeptical and Natasha sounded downright disbelieving.

"A Nazi dinosaur. Well, created by Nazis anyway," Steve clarified. "And before you ask, no, I've no idea how they did it."

"You're telling us that we're supposed to believe that the Nazis somehow reverse engineered a dinosaur and that Steve Rogers, Captain Freaking America, punched it out and by some strange quirk of luck, no one ever heard of this story before now."

"It was classified, Tony."

"It was classified, Tony," Tony aped, in what was probably the most annoying, mocking tone he could manage. "Yeah, no. I don't buy it."

"Do you happen to have access to old SSR files? The ones from during the War?"

"You know me, if a file exists somewhere, I can find it."

Steve smiled. "Operation Tyranno."

"JARVIS?" Tony seemed a little less sure of himself as he ordered his AI to comb through the data. "What're we looking for."

"The whole thing was as top secret as missions can get," Bucky explained, "but Morita took a picture, and with luck there'll be-"

"Holy. Fucking. Hell." Tony swiped the photo that appeared on his tablet and sent it to the big screen tv in the middle of the room.

Thor was the first to comment on what they saw. "That is quite the foe, Captain."

"Holy shit, Cap," Clint said, sounding justifiably amazed. "That's you! Punching out a tyrannosaurus rex! Does that mean everything you told us, the vampires-"

"The witches-"

"The Mutated gorillas-"

"The yeti-"

"The zombies. Everything. Everything was true," Tony said. "I don't believe it. Wow."

"You should know better than to doubt ol' Cap here," Bucky said, slapping Steve hard on the back. "A team's gotta trust its leader, right, Cap?"

"Right, Buck, although I still say that's a terrible picture, makes it look way too easy," Steve responded, carefully not commenting on the truthfulness of any of the other stories they told, sticking to the true one.

"I want to hear the whole story," Clint said, flailing a little at the size of the dinosaur in the photo.

"No, tell us about the yetis-"

"No, the witches-"

"No, wait till I get a beer-"

"I need chips!"

"Vampires! Tell us about the vampires!"

"No, the zombies-"

Steve looked at Bucky and Bucky looked back, gave him a _'ready to have some fun?'_ look and then he settled back on the couch with his feet on the coffee table and opened his mouth, ready to spin some ridiculous whoppers.


End file.
